Status: Delivered. Described from our own delivery records. Client identity, brand and commercial terms are withheld. Figures, where given, cover the period stated and nothing beyond it.
Context
A vendor supplying individual hospitality businesses — independent restaurants, cafés and bars — across a regional market.
Its customers are small, numerous, and order frequently in modest quantities. Serving them well through a sales-rep model is expensive; serving them badly loses them to a larger distributor.
The problem
- Ordering was mediated by people — phone, email, reps — which capped how many customers the business could serve well.
- Customers had no way to see their own pricing, order history or availability without asking.
- Reaching new shops meant adding sales capacity, so growth was linear with headcount.
- Orders arriving through informal channels were re-entered into the operational system.
What we built
A B2B commerce platform
Carrying customer-specific pricing, availability and ordering, connected to the operational system as the source of truth rather than as a separate storefront with its own stock numbers.
A companion mobile application
For shop owners, so an order can be placed in the two minutes between service periods rather than requiring a desk.
Direct order flow into operations
An order placed by a customer becomes a transaction in the operational system without transcription.
How we delivered it
- 1
Discovery with trade customers
Not only with the vendor — because the constraint was how a busy shop owner actually behaves.
- 2
Foundation
Environments, deployment pipelines, catalogue and pricing structure.
- 3
Platform build
Catalogue, customer-specific pricing, ordering, order history.
- 4
Mobile app
Built against the platform's API, then tested with real shop owners.
- 5
Pilot cohort
A group of customers before general availability.
- 6
Roll-out and iteration
Based on how the first cohort actually used it.
How it was phased
Indicative phasing for work of this shape. Actual duration varies with data quality, access and decision speed.
What the client keeps
- The platform and mobile application source in their own repositories
- The catalogue and pricing model
- Deployment pipelines
- Integration documentation